130 nm Itanium will run at 1.5GHz

By 12.02.2002 :: 3:51PM EST12.02.2002

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intel has released detailed information on the next generation itanium processor, code-named “madison.” the chip will run at 1.5ghz, and sport a 6 megabyte l2 cache. this cpu will be made on a 130 nm process, but will still be 374 square millimeters, which is quite large. it will dissipate 130 watts and have 400 million transistors. madison should have an instruction per second (ipc) of 6, compared with the pentium 4's ipc of 2. it may end up being the first itanium version that actually sells well. it will be interesting to see how madison compares to amd's opteron processor, with a 1 mb l2 cache. amd is hoping to make inroads in the lucrative server market with opteron, but the opteron will have only one-sixth of the l2 cache that madison will have. however, the opteron should dissipate approximately 70 watts, which will make that cpu more appropriate for certain cost- and heat-constrained tasks than the 130 nm itanium. at about us$4,227 the chip won't come cheap, and the opteron will almost certainly be substantially less expensive. madison (itanium iii?) will be followed by the montecito (itanium iv?) in 2004, which will be fabricated on a 90 nm process.

user comments 31 comment(s)

thoughts on price…(3:56pm est mon dec 02 2002)you would think intel would do what they are famous for. and that is price appropriately and make up the difference on extreme volume sales.

why would this be any different. who is the dopey bean counter that insists on this bad boy being priced so damn high? i think if it had stellar performance and apps were rewritten to take advantage of it, a lot of folks would seriously look at it and pony us some cash if the chip were in the neighborhood of $1k. right or wrong here folks??

amd = japanevolution not revolutionsolve problems with elegant engineering rather then brute force.get more work done with less waste, less heat.opteron = high rpm 4-banger– by rug

nfb(4:07pm est mon dec 02 2002)its cause demand is massively low for a chip with 6 megs of cach and with the features/design of itanium.

i still maintain that though everyone is making comparisons between opteron and itanium they are in fairly different markets.

opteron's main rival is the p4xeon and not the itanium. the xeon is closer in specs, price, and cache. the main difference is that the xeon cannot processor 64bit code.

the 64bit code is the only reason itanium and opteron are 'in the same class' but i highly doubt that a company will be chosing between going with opterons or itanium. more than likely it will be a choice between xeon and opteron. – by manu

opteron vs. itanium…(4:17pm est mon dec 02 2002)…is not a fair comparision. they are different markets.to nifty fun bags: this price really isn't that much higher than current itaniums. compare the prices to the few prices listed for ultrasparcs on pricewatch, and you'll see it is priced competitively. – by mike

price…(4:27pm est mon dec 02 2002)is it all about the cache? why do i find it hard to believe that 6megs of cache is gonna racket up the price to $4k??

if so, fine, drop it down to one or two megs and sell me one or two new itaniums for $800.00 and i would be happy. okay, assuming i have a 64bit os and recompiled apps to take advantage of it. o) – by nifty fun bags

intel=m$(4:38pm est mon dec 02 2002)announce lots of advancements. make them all disabled when they don't work, like hyperthreading. every intel release has had it's advertised advancement disabled. – by bill & andy

6 ips!(4:45pm est mon dec 02 2002)“madison should have an instruction per second (ipc) of 6”

likely sustained by a 6mb cache. someone plz get the athlon numbahs, and please do a price/performance comparison.

not to mention the itanium cant run my unreal 2003. – by the iceman

if you try to compare an itanium to an x86(-64) based system, then(5:13pm est mon dec 02 2002)you're automatically wrong. first, they are completely different systems. second, an itanium is made for the large business server market. if you (personally) can afford one, then it's too cheap.

it's not about you. it's about the large business that needs it. – by true logic

itanium large cache good for smp(5:47pm est mon dec 02 2002)i think the key reason there is a lot of cache on itanium processors is that they are really meant to be run in smp servers. the more cache per processor the better the smp scalability… less contention for the main ram.

opteron's scheme for smp is vastly different… will be interesting to see how it scales in large smp servers!!! – by sqlspeed

journalists(6:03pm est mon dec 02 2002)“intel must meet a higher standard for itanium to catch on because adopting the new chip requires companies to completely rewrite their software”

from the article. i wish these guys would learn a thing or two. sql server had one guy working to re-compile their code to itanium. it didn't take him that long. now optimizing yes, it might take some re-writing, but unless your code is written “completely” in x86 assembler your ownly going have to “completely” recompile it. – by et

a “celeron” itanium(6:30pm est mon dec 02 2002)i'm sure intel has plans for a cut down itanium, and since the majority of the itaniums core is cache it will probably be smaller than the opteron and less expensive to produce. intel always has a plan b! those jerks – by some guy

what ??(7:21pm est mon dec 02 2002)“madison should have an instruction per second (ipc) of 6, compared with the pentium 4's ipc of 2 “

the p4 has an ipc of 6, and the athlon has an ipc of 9 for you the iceman , and 6 ipc @ 1.5ghz is 9 million operations per second .. not 9 billion!!

– by ste

re: sander olson(7:26pm est mon dec 02 2002)[“where you're focusing on a more complex architecture…you may not run it as fast, but you're doing more work per each cycle,” mccarron said. itaniums can execute about six instructions per clock cycle, compared with one or two for pentium processors, he said.]

pentium .. not pentium 4

opteron, from what i've read will have an ipc of 12 :)

– by ste

different markets(7:29pm est mon dec 02 2002)i know opteron and itanium are aimed at different markets … but to be honest i wouldn't put any of that intel s**te in an large scale server i would build .. especially not with that power consumtion it's using !!

– by ste

ridiculous…(7:47pm est mon dec 02 2002)130 watts?!?!?!

lol… comeon…– by bassie.

again, check out an ultrasparc system(8:05pm est mon dec 02 2002)you will see the market for this chip.

opterons are aimed at smaller scale webservers, workstations, and in house servers.

the itanium is a massive chip meant for large scale db servers and other massive computational servers. – by manu

re:manu(8:11pm est mon dec 02 2002)is that why the clock rate is so slow. well we will have to wait to see how it performs. the p4 chips where hyped and did not live up to it.

– by rax

what ?(8:40pm est mon dec 02 2002)6 ipc @ 1.5ghz is 9 million operations per second .. not 9 billion!!

somday (8:45pm est mon dec 02 2002)they will measure ops per cycle as the same type of ops and not x86 ops in intel and micro ops in amd to make amd smell good

if the current xp runs 6 ops per clock and the p4 runs 2 why is the xp not 3 times faster clock for clock

simple answer not all 'ops' are created equal. since the amd chips run about 25-50% faster (right?) per clock then we can see that the 2 op vs 6 op is amds equivelent market ploy to intels 'look it runs at 3 ghz' – by getafu%inclue

and yes i do need a new cpu! my 900 tbird is great but i really want a 2800+ barton!!

– by ste

wow!!! hurray for the itanium!(9:53pm est mon dec 02 2002)

boy, some of you folk don't understand that it is able to do more than 200 times the number of instructions (you see, is not all about clock speed folks!) per clock cycle than the pentium 4 or any other intel or amd chips!

! ! ! w o w ! ! !

i can't hardly get my hands on one!

it is well worth $4,227 in my humble opinion!

– by practical!

lol ste(10:11pm est mon dec 02 2002)even worst than you math is the fact you called me wrong.

iceman(7:42am est tue dec 03 2002)i've got a aiw radeon .. not the most powerful thing in the world … i'm gonna have a nice new graphics card in my new box .. whether that'll be ati on nvidia .. i guess we'll have to wait and see!

p.s. sorry for calling you wrong .. i'll make sure i do my posts at a more reasonable hour (not 1-2am here in the uk!!), so that they're correct!– by ste

an athlon 2200+ (1.8 ghz) turned out around 5 billion ips as well, giving an ipc of about 2.77– by anon

hmm(9:24am est tue dec 03 2002)someone not up with the times, stating that amd genererates less heat. for a time, amd cpu's were burning out because of high heat, and no adequate safety to turn off the computer before burning out the chips.

also, still, amd produces chips which generage more heat then intel on average.

it is nice to make anaologies, as long as you know what your talking about. – by topher

also(9:25am est tue dec 03 2002)the bottom line is that intel is driving the industry now, by at least coming out with new technology on a regular basis. where is that opteron chip amd?????? q3 or q4 2003. is that before or after they go bankrupt? – by topher

re: topher(10:02am est tue dec 03 2002)amd chips only burn out if the person who installs it has no idea how to put on a heatsink/fan ..

amd chips run hotter yes .. they do more work!

if 2 people do the 100m sprint … one walks (intel) .. one runs (amd) .. amd wins .. who's gonna be hotter at the end ?

i'd much prefer a hotter chip that performs better than a cool chip!– by ste